


nostophobia (best left buried)

by fnowae



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: :), Angst, I think?, M/M, Magical Realism, Memory Loss, what the hell do i tag this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 19:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14700618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fnowae/pseuds/fnowae
Summary: nostophobianounan abnormal fear or dislike of returning home.





	nostophobia (best left buried)

**Author's Note:**

> :) what the hell is happening anymore!
> 
> I don’t even know what this is, and I don’t know if I’ll continue it, but. whatever! here it is! chapter one!
> 
> enjoy xoxo

It's one of those nights when the streetlights light the clouds, and the sky is bathed in an ethereal pink-orange glow. Everyone is asleep, it seems, and no noise is audible but for the rushing wind. It almost feels like anything can, and will, happen. 

Patrick shouldn't be out alone this late, he knows that, but he'd gotten caught up at work and now he's walking home through an abandoned alleyway, crossing his fingers as he stares up the damp brick walls of the surrounding buildings and watches a screeching crow fly past him, hoping that all the warnings about dark alleys he'd heard as a kid were false. 

He's almost out of the alley and ready to let out a sigh of relief when a voice behind him freezes him in his tracks. 

"Holy shit, Patrick?"

Patrick stops, frowning, not daring to turn towards the voice. He doesn't recognize it - well, actually, it would be more accurate to say he doesn't remember hearing it before, but something about it is still familiar. 

Patrick is used to things feeling like this - everything before two years ago is a mental blank for him. There's been plenty of times he's run into an old friend and had a sense of knowing them, without being able to actually remember. He's been told plenty of times (by his friends, family, doctors, pretty much anyone) that he should feel lucky his memory is all he's lost, that he'd had a "serious accident", and this is actually an astounding recovery. 

Patrick calls bullshit on all that, though, because it leads to moments like this, where he's sure he should know the stranger standing behind him in a dark alleyway, but he simply doesn't. 

The stranger, who Patrick should probably know, keeps talking. "Really, Patrick, is that you? Fuck, I've been worried - _we've_ been worried, didn't know-"

"Sorry, what?" Patrick responds, slowly turning around. The stranger is revealed - a guy in a scarf, jeans, and a thick black coat, with curly brown hair tucked under a knit cap and eyes that, though Patrick's sure it's just a weird trick of the light, just like the glowing clouds up above, seem to have their own light. 

The stranger doesn't seem to catch that Patrick doesn't know who he is. He just keeps talking. "Seriously, holy shit, Pete and I haven't heard from you in forever - I thought that was _impossible_ \- and we thought you were _dead_ , not that it would be a surprise, at this point, because god knows-"

"Uh, where the fuck did you come from?" Patrick cuts him off, only now starting to wonder exactly how this stranger ended up behind him when he'd heard no other set of footsteps in the echoey alley, and when he'd seen no one follow him in. 

"What? What do you mean? You know I-" The stranger pauses, face falling as something akin to realization settles in. "Oh. You _don't_ know, do you?"

"I'm sorry, but I have no idea who you are," Patrick says, watching the stranger's face fall further as he continues, "And I have no idea who Pete is, or how you stalked me in an alleyway-" Noticing the stranger's face going from upset to desperate, Patrick starts to feel guilty and tries to salvage the poor guy's feelings. "Listen, don't feel bad, it's not your fault, I've got amnesia. I probably did know you at some point, but-"

"You _do_?" The stranger's jaw drops, face changing again, now from despair to surprise. 

Patrick frowns. "Yeah, I do. And I'm sorry, uh-"

"Joe," the stranger supplies, and unsurprisingly, the name doesn't ring any bells. Nothing ever does. 

"Joe," Patrick repeats blankly. "Right, I'm sorry, but I have to get home, and I really don't know who you are."

"Huh." Patrick isn't even sure how to describe Joe's expression anymore - some odd mix of confused, unsure, and something else. Patrick doesn't understand any of it, but then again, he'd probably only understand if he could remember who Joe even is. And it's not like that's about to happen. 

"See you, I guess," Patrick says, not intending to see Joe again at all. He's severely creeped out by this meeting, and all he wants is to go home and forget this ever happened. 

"Okay." Patrick hears the final word, but when he turns around, Joe is gone. 

Patrick shudders involuntarily and keeps walking. 

///

That night, Patrick dreams. For the most part that’s all he knows about it. When he wakes up every detail of the dream leaks away into the cracks of his mind that swallow up every chance he’s ever had to remember, everything except for a face, and eyes that, this time, are definitely glowing. 

///

Going into work feels weird today. Patrick works in a tiny bakery in the corner of downtown, and on Wednesdays like today, he’s got the morning shift. He’s the first person in, and he spends an hour alone in the store setting up. 

They don’t open until noon - the shop doesn’t do breakfast - and even then, Patrick has fifteen minutes he has to run the place alone before the extra employees they need for the lunch rush come in. It’s 11:54, and he’s just getting ready to unlock the doors, which mostly means putting a tray of cookies into the oven, organizing the display case, and washing a few leftover dishes. 

Patrick likes his job, okay, and he usually likes his time working alone as well, but something is _wrong_ today. His gut twists as he puts a couple pans on the drying rack, and he isn’t sure why. Fragments of his dream keeps surfacing, and then submerging themselves again, and each time he’s left feeling an emotion he can’t explain. He feels overjoyed, once, but no matter how much he digs, he can’t explain why. But mostly? Mostly he feels fear. 

Patrick is eternally relieved when someone shows up to work early. At 11:57, the back door opens and his coworker slash boss slash best friend walks in, arms full of extra baking ingredients. 

“G’morning,” Andy says, dropping his armful on the counter and beginning to organize it, throwing Patrick a casual smile. 

“Morning,” Patrick answers, feeling breathless and weird but better, because Andy has always made him feel better. 

Andy is Patrick’s closest friend, solely because he’s the only friend Patrick can truly claim to know anymore. He was the first person Patrick met after _the accident_ , and in fact the person who had found Patrick in the first place. He’s told, constantly, that Andy had called 911 after finding him bruised and bleeding and broken under a busted trash can in a back alley. The story always feels strange and wrong and fake but the thing is, Andy’s never actually told it that way, never actually told it at all (except for saying “I was the one who found you”), and that might be why Patrick trusts him in the first place. 

It’s also that Patrick remembers Andy. He doesn’t have a single memory of Andy before _the accident_ but it’s not because there’s a hole that he’s desperately trying to fill, it’s because there were never any such memories in the first place. Patrick never feels guilty or weird or wrong around Andy. Andy is the only person he thinks he really even knows anymore. 

Andy had given him this job, too - he’s the one who owns the shop, and Patrick had needed a way to earn money, so Andy had kindly offered. (Patrick had asked if there was an old job he could go back to, and he got pointed to a record shop in a small, worn down neighborhood, but the man who he apparently used to work for seemed confused and told him he’d quit months ago. Patrick’s mother insists he never did. Everything about it felt off and Patrick likes the bakery better than that dim, eerie record shop anyways.) 

In the end, Andy is kind of an anchor for Patrick. He is the only thing Patrick thinks he will ever fully know, the best part of the new life he’s trying to have. When he hands Patrick some surplus flour bags to put in the storage room, the flickers of almost-memories disappear, taking their fear and confusion with them, and Patrick starts to feel alright again. 

“I think we should make those pecan biscuits again today,” Patrick calls from the room, shelving the flour next to four other bags, all various shades of empty. “The ones from a month ago? They sold really well, and I heard a couple people saying they wished we’d make them again last night.”

“Oh, sure,” Andy agrees as Patrick steps back out into the kitchen area. “You’re right, those were good. I think we’ve got the stuff for them, but we might need extra pecans. We can send, uh - who’s the new girl again?”

“Carla?” Patrick provides, crossing the room and leaning down to pull his tray of cookies out of the oven. 

“Carla.” Andy nods. “We can send Carla to grab more - she’s really good at supply runs. She needs a raise.”

Patrick hums in agreement, sliding the tray of lemon cookies out of the oven and setting them down to cool. They smell amazing - these ones are Patrick’s favorite, and for a reason. He slides off his pair of worn oven mitts and goes to grab the powdered sugar from its cupboard nearby. He’s going to wait until the cookies cool to dust them, but it’s always good to be prepared.

Andy excuses himself to quickly unlock the door and flick on their little neon _OPEN_ sign, and Patrick is left alone again in the relative quiet of the kitchen. Something settles over him again as he pulls out the sifter - something weird and unwanted. His stomach flips and he shudders and it feels like - it feels like _something_ big is about to happen but then Andy comes back in and it all goes away again. 

“I’m gonna start those biscuits,” Andy says, “do you want to go work the register? I think someone’s coming in.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, unable to shake the fact that whatever was about to crash over him has only been averted for so long, “Yeah, I’d love to.”

///

No one has ever told Patrick what really happened. 

Some people say he was attacked, but no one knows by who. Some people say he fell, but they can’t say from where. Some people tell him he was unlucky, but they don’t specify how. All Patrick knows for sure is that he was _bleeding bruised broken_ and that it took him a year to fully heal. He can’t say for sure what made the wounds he bled from, can’t say for sure what bruised him so badly, can’t say for sure what broke his leg into fragments, can’t say for sure what hit him so hard over the head that he still can’t recall the first twenty-eight years of his life. _Bleeding bruised broken_ is the only thing he truly knows. 

And after two years, Patrick has finally come to terms with the fact he wants it to stay that way. 

///

Patrick dreams again. 

It’s the same face, again, over and over but he can’t remember where or when or what the body it must have been attached to was doing. He lets himself attach a name this time, though. 

It’s Joe.

He doesn’t know how or why or if he’ll ever truly get to see these almost-memories but for now he just knows that Joe really was part of his past, after all. 

///

Patrick has the night shift at work the next day. Not many people come in. He’s mostly in the kitchen prepping for tomorrow, and locking up when everyone else has left. 

He takes an orange tart home with him, snacking on it as he walks. He always takes one thing home - Andy practically makes him do it, and it’s the only pity gift that Patrick is okay with receiving - partly because it’s Andy, partly because he loves orange tarts. He’s just finishing off the last couple bites when someone runs straight into him and his eyes flick up to meet eerie blue ones that he’s spent the past day or so convincing himself he’s never seen before. 

“Fuck,” Joe blurts out, breathless and wide-eyed, and Patrick looks around, trying to see if anyone else is seeing this, because this feels so - so _unreal_ and certainly someone else must be seeing it too, but the street is dark and empty and wrong and Patrick wonders if this is just a dream again. 

“I - I need to-“ Joe stammers, shooting a glance over his shoulder and shaking his head before meeting Patrick’s eyes again. “ _Fuck_ ,” he repeats, laughing bitterly, “we have to stop meeting like this.” 

Then in a flash he’s past Patrick, running again, and Patrick spins around, driven by an emotion he cannot explain, and yells, “Joe, _wait_!”, but it’s only after the words leave his lips that he realizes Joe isn’t there anymore. 

Patrick isn’t completely sure this wasn’t another dream, but Joe seems to have a habit of disappearing like that, so maybe this was real after all. But it still doesn’t make _sense_. What the hell was Joe, this man Patrick doesn’t even _know_ , not anymore, doing running down the sidewalk at ten at night, out of breath and terrified, then disappearing like that? 

It occurs to Patrick with a jolt that he knows the answer. Joe wasn’t just out running. He was running _from_ something. But Patrick can’t think of what it could have been. There was nothing, no one, chasing after Joe, not that he could tell, nothing and no one to be afraid of. 

But then Patrick remembers Joe’s consistent disappearing act, the weird way he comes and goes to and from nowhere at all, and he thinks maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Joe was running from something after all. 

///

That night, Patrick remembers his dream. 

He’s with Joe again and they’re both running this time, Joe’s got Patrick’s hand in an iron grip and he’s gritting out something about _thosefuckersjustdontrestimsosorrytrickweregoingtogethomeipromise_ and Patrick is scared and running and Joe doesn’t disappear this time and Patrick doesn’t know why. 

He wakes up shaking in a cold sweat and there’s a weight on him that isn’t really there. And that’s when it hits him, like a - like a fucking truck, knocks the wind out of him and breaks him in two. 

That was a memory. 

That was a memory, and Patrick hasn’t lost it, it’s still there, in his head, and it’s from _before_. For the first time, Patrick remembers something from before two years ago, and it’s _running_. Something sick and twisted in the back of his mind gives him the horrifying feeling that it’s a warning of what’s to come, that he needs to turn back or he’ll open floodgates that will do nothing but drown him. 

Patrick shudders, trying to keep unwanted tears out of his eyes as something else crashes down on him. He may still have no clue what Joe was running from, but now he knows something worse. 

Whatever it is, he’s running from it too.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> if you enjoyed this I really appreciate comments, they really do make me want to continue writing :)
> 
> thank you so much!!!!!


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